Barnabas Monkeypants

On Saturday, we met up with one of Henry’s girlfriends (Vivi) and her parents (not as important in Henry’s eyes — sorry, guys) at the Lincoln Park Zoo. It was a chilly, early fall afternoon, but we all bundled up. Fall is my favorite season, and walking around the city zoo is one of my favorite things to do. (Henry loves the zoo, too.)

Everyone arrived at the same time and we agreed to meet up at the lion pit. Luckily, they were out. The biggest issue with the local zoo — and probably with any zoo — is that all the animals are never out at the same time. The second biggest issue with the zoo is that these animals, especially the big cats, don’t do much. They lounge, they sleep, they gnaw on bones.

Well, as we were all standing there, looking at these wonderful beasts, the male lion stood up, stretched and walked over to the lioness. Everyone oohed and aaahed. I mean, the lion actually did something!

Unfortunately for the throng of people who were quite chaste, the male lion decided it was time to mount the lioness, right there in front of the crowd of many, many young children.

A “woah!” came over the crowd as every parent picked up their child and practically ran away from the lions as if they were all infected with the swine flu and were coughing. COUGHING! I have to admit that I walked Henry away, too, but I’m not really sure why. I mean, he’s 14 months old! He has no clue what they were doing, and even if he did, so what? It wasn’t dirty. I mean, it wasn’t animal pornography. (Boy, that’s going to get this blog some interesting hits, I’ll tell you what.) It was just two animals doing what two animals do.

I really think that I have to start thinking of what will be the best for Henry and Kristen and the whole family and not just what everyone else does or some knee-jerk reaction.

And if that means Henry can watch two big cats gettin’ it on (Barry White style), so be it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Barnabas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.